Senior Reporter
anna-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt
The teenager who was killed in Port-of-Spain yesterday had recently moved out of his childhood home in Diego Martin to avoid becoming a statistic. But despite resettling into an apartment on Nelson Street, Jerome “GI” Joseph was hunted down by criminal elements determined to kill him.
The 17-year-old was reportedly shot in the head as he emerged from the apartment he was staying in after someone called out to him around 6.45 am.
Joseph was found lying face down at the bottom of the stairwell, clad in a pair of briefs. Police labelled the killing as gang-related. Relatives went to identify his body at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, yesterday.
One woman said, “He was a good boy.” But “due to certain circumstances in the area, that’s why he moved out.” She claimed Joseph ended up living on Nelson Street after certain people in the Diego Martin area chased a close relative of his from the area. Joseph previously lived at North Coast Road, Diego Martin.
Revealing that she had spoken to the self-employed mechanic before about his lifestyle choices, she still mourned the loss. “He chose that road,” she added.
Asked to describe Joseph, she said he was “a loving boy who loved his family.” She laughed, “When he get vex, phew, but he loved to help people and fix cars.”
Guardian Media was told that Joseph’s family spared no effort to ensure he received an education. One of the women said he attended Servol and several other institutions to learn trade but had dropped out due to the lure of the gang lifestyle.
Joseph, they said, grew up without his father. They said if the elder male had been around, Joseph’s life would have turned out differently.
The woman said she last saw Joseph on Tuesday when she and another relative went to look for him at Nelson Street, and he had given her $25. But she admitted “seeing something” she hadn’t wanted to, which brought the visit to a premature end.
Zeroing in on the crime situation, one of the women declared, “It’s just horrible, and these youths are just being dunce as myself.” She said there was so much despair and very little hope that it would change anytime soon. “It doh have no stopping; it doh have no end to this thing,” she cried.
Another female expressed anger as she called for the situation to be tackled from the top. “You have to get rid of the heads,” she said. “Then those lil youths and them might calm down because it is the heads who are sending them and giving them guns. They have the youths and them dying young and them rock back enjoying while them youths dying out.”
She placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of those heading criminal gangs in the country.
